If Jack
Guthrie is remembered at all today, it is as the cousin of Woody Guthrie, but in his own
lifetime, Jack was far more commercially successful than
Woody ever was while he was alive. He
was one of the most important and influential country singers of the mid-'40s,
and only his early death from tuberculosis prevented his legacy from being
better known to the generations since.
Guthrie was born in Olive, OK, in 1915, the son of a blacksmith who also played
the fiddle in his spare time. The family led a somewhat mobile existence in the
area around Texas and Oklahoma, and Guthrie had little chance to put down deep
roots. His main interests as a boy included roping and trick riding, at which he
became very good. He also listened to his father's playing and the music of
Jimmie Rodgers, and some sources
indicate that he was taught guitar by Gene
Autry in the years before Autry became
a recording star.
The family had little to hold them in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era and
eventually migrated to California, where they settled in the area around
Sacramento. He performed in rodeos and was employed by the National Forest
Service through the Works Progress Administration. In 1934, he married Ruth
Henderson, and the two worked together for a time in an act together, in which
he would use his skills with a bullwhip to snap cigarettes out of her mouth. By
most accounts, the marriage was a lasting one, though not always happy, and the
two spent a fair amount of time living apart from one another. Woody's arrival in California three
years later gave the cousins the opportunity to team up. Their act was heard on
radio during the summer of 1937, under the name The Oklahoman and Woody Show. It
was a success in terms of listener response and fan mail, but it paid no money,
and the boost it generated for their club performances wasn't sufficient to
provide either man with a living. The partnership broke up when Jack took a job
in construction to earn more money and
Woody found a new partner, Maxine ("Lefty Lou") Crissman, although Jack
continued to appear occasionally with the duo. By 1939,
Woody had headed to New York, where he first hooked up with the organized
Left and political singers like Pete Seeger,
and began the main body of his musical career. Jack stayed in California and
continued to play before live audiences in bars and other local venues whenever
he could, and one of the songs that he picked up was a
Woody original, "Oklahoma Hills." Jack
made some changes and refinements in his cousin's song, effectively earning a co-authorship
credit. At that time, California was populated by many thousands of transplanted
Oklahomans, and Jack became well known for his version of "Oklahoma Hills."
Guthrie became a well-known figure in the clubs around Los Angeles, where his
brand of dance music was extremely popular and his flamboyance made him a
memorable figure — at rodeos, he was known for leaving the band and doing some
trick riding during a set. By 1944, he was more than ready to begin recording.
With the encouragement of Maxine Crissman's sister Mary Ruth, he approached
Capitol Records, and she also put up the money for the demo record that he used
to get in the door, "Oklahoma Hills." He recruited a band from among
acquaintances, did the demo, and went to Capitol.
In 1944, Capitol Records — which had only been founded four years earlier — had
begun a new cycle of signing country and blues artists, which included
Leadbelly and
Merle Travis. Jack Guthrie was one of
the new signings, in what turned out to be a seven-year contract. He made his
Capitol recording debut in October of 1944 with "Oklahoma Hills," with a backing
band called
the Oklahomans, consisting of Porky Freedman (lead guitar), Red Murrell (rhythm
guitar), Cliffie Stone (bass), and
Billy Hughes (fiddle) — he cut the B-side
"I'm Brandin My Darlin' With My Heart" and a cover of an
Ernest Tubb number, "Careless Darlin'," at
the same session on October 16, 1944. Nine days later, Guthrie had a second
recording session that yielded four more songs, including his version of
Jimmie Rodgers' "When the Cactus Is in
Bloom," a number that highlighted Guthrie's yodeling ability. "Oklahoma Hills"
was released early in 1945 and rose to number one on the country charts,
spending six weeks in that spot.
Before the song was even released, however, Guthrie had been drafted and was
serving in the Pacific, stationed as an entertainer in Special Services on Iwo
Jima. He was unable to do anything about his record's success, and this led to
decisions that would ultimately have tragic consequences. Desperate to return to
the United States so he could resume recording, Guthrie signed up for an
additional year's enlistment in Special Services in exchange to being sent
stateside. He returned to the United States in the first days of 1946 and tried
to resume his performing career while still in uniform. He was stationed at Fort
Lewis, WA, began playing with Buck Ritchey and His K-6 Wranglers in Tacoma, and
returned to Capitol on January 29, 1946, for his first recording sessions since
October of 1944. His personal appearances were so popular that a publisher felt
confident enough to issue a Guthrie songbook that proved very popular locally.
In early 1946, just as he was resuming his career, Guthrie's weight began
dropping rapidly, and a civilian doctor diagnosed his problem as tuberculosis.
He was immediately released from the army, and had he used this chance to
convalesce, it is possible that Guthrie might have made a full recovery. Instead,
never believing his ailment to be a serious case of the disease, he kept working,
organizing a new band and going out of the road.
And the irony was that he was on his way to stardom. "Oklahoma Hills" brought
Guthrie to the attention of Ernest Tubb,
who got Guthrie a gig on the Grand Ole Opry and toured with him for two weeks,
during which they became good friends. Guthrie's band, which was later inherited
by T. Texas Tyler, was a success, though
by the time they were back in California in the spring of 1946, his health had
begun to deteriorate further. Advised to lay off for a year and go into a
sanitarium, he instead insisted on pushing himself to take advantage of the
success he had found. Moreover, he never gave up the smoking or drinking that
further taxed his system. Guthrie continued recording and performing every
chance that he could, and he even turned up in the movie Hollywood Barn Dance,
singing "Okie Boogie." He signed a contract that summer to do a movie with
cowboy B-movie star Russell Hayden, but it never happened. By the spring of
1947, he weighed less than a hundred pounds, and that summer he entered a
veterans hospital near Sacramento and was informed by the doctors that the
prognosis was terminal.
This did nothing to slow him down. In fact, the result was the opposite — as all
of Guthrie's records were selling and Capitol wanted every side that they could
get out of him, he became a willing participant in this musical death march,
seeing this as his best chance to leave a lasting legacy. Guthrie's attitude had
always been that if he was going to die anyway, that he should make the most of
the time he did have.
Additionally, although it sounds grisly in retrospect, the dedication was
justified. Even in the songs from Guthrie's later sessions, there is a
compelling quality to the music. His easygoing manner, his way with a phrase,
and his studio band's virtuosity leave the listener wanting to hear more. The
play of the words and music are startling in their attractiveness, and there's
hardly a weak number in his output, despite the conditions under which most of
it was recorded.
Guthrie continued to record, despite being so weak that his wife had to set up a
bed for him in the back of their car when he traveled anywhere. At his final
sessions, he had to be transported in an ambulance, and he had to lie down and
sleep between songs to regain what strength he still had. He finally amassed a
body of more than 30 songs, in addition to radio transcription discs intended
for broadcast. Guthrie lingered into the first weeks of 1948 and finally died in
a sanitarium on January 15 of that year. Ironically, his records continued to
sell for years after his death and remained in print, sometimes in redubbed form
with extra instruments added. Meanwhile,
Woody's reputation as an author of topical and political songs grew in the
folk community; the folk music boom of the late '50s and early '60s and the rise
of such figures as Bob Dylan, who freely traded on
Woody's image and legacy in his early
days, eventually eclipsed the memory and reputation of his cousin, at least in
the popular culture.
In 1966, Capitol rather belatedly released an LP collection, Jack Guthrie's
Greatest Songs. It helped keep Guthrie's legacy before the public, but it
was Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son and
Jack's nephew — and the first member of the Guthrie family since Jack to achieve
mass popularity and sell large numbers of records to the public in his own
musical prime — who played just as large a role, continuing to perform and
record his uncle's music into the 1970s.

OKLAHOMA
HILLS - Oklahoma Hills / When The Cactus Is In Bloom / Next To The Soil
/ Shame On You / I'm Brandin' My Darlin' With My Heart / Careless Darlin' /
Oakie Boogie / In The Shadows Of My Heart / For Oklahoma, I'm Yearning / No
Need To Knock On My Door / Shut That Gate / I'm Tellin' You / Chained T A
Memory / Look Out For The Crossing / Dallas Darlin' / Colorado Blues /
Welcome Home Stranger / I Still Love You As I Did In Yesterday / Oklahoma's
Calling / The Clouds Rained Trouble Down / Answer To 'Moonlights And Skies'
/ Please, Oh Please / I Loved You Once But I Can't Trust You Now / Out Of
Sight - Out Of Mind / I'm Building A Stairway To Heaven / Ida Red / I Told
You Once / San Antonio Rose / You Laughed And I Cried